For approval: ENCUL

[Chuck Swiger]

Hello, readers of license-discuss:

Thank you for your time and responses to the proposed license.

Perhaps it would be most useful to acknowledge the points that several 
people have brought up, before I reply to comments from a specific 
individual.

I've had about a half-dozen people tell me that "ENCUL" is an acronym 
that has strong connotations in French.  J'ai etudie' la langue francais 
pour trois ans, mais je comprende plus bien que je parle.  Trouvez le 
bon mot, c'est difficile pour moi de temps en temps.

In the event that deferring to French sensibilities is in the interests 
of polite conversation-- I'll defer consideration of whether an 
OSI-approved licensed named "ENCUL" would be more or less likely to be 
used *because* of the name :-)-- yes, I'm willing to change it. 
Suggestions for an innocuous name would be appreciated.

	--

Someone else observed that there was some degree of ambiguity.  I would 
agree, and state that this is by intention, not by omission.  A good 
license is short, readable, avoids internal self-contradiction, and what 
it means should be clear without long, tediously detailed examples which 
most people don't ever read.

Beyond that, sometimes the attempt to define things precisely is 
counterproductive.  If you write a license cotaining a detailed list of 
ten specific things which someone can (or can't do), and they find an 
eleventh which wasn't covered, the end result often fails to be an 
improvement over writing a license covering the general case.

An author by the name of L.E. Modesitt discussed the example of who owns 
the apples that fall from your apple tree over the fence into your 
neighbors yard.  And what happens when someone makes specific case law 
about this in one place, only that conflicts with specific case law in 
another place-- or about fruit falling from trees in general, not just 
apple trees-- etc, etc.

	--

Finally, for the sake of discussion: would software under any closed 
license (or not available at all, aka "unplublished trade secret"), 
which includes acondition where the software reverts to a BSD license 
after a well-defined time, be OSI open source?

-Chuck

PS: I am subscribed to the list, so CC:ing me is not necessary.


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